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Friday, July 18, 2025

Revisiting Paul Baran’s The Political Economy of Growth for Today



And this brings me to what I referred to earlier as a reaffirmation of my views on the basic problem confronting the underdeveloped countries. The principal insights, which must not be obscured by matters of secondary or tertiary importance, are two. The first is that, if what is sought is rapid economic development, comprehensive economic planning is indispensable… if the increase in a country’s aggregate output is to attain the magnitude, of, say, 8 to 10 per cent per annum; if in order to achieve it, the mode of utilization of a nation’s human and material resources is to be radically changed, with certain less productive lines of economic activity abandoned and other more rewarding ones taken up; then only a deliberate, long range planning effort can assure the attainment of the goal…

The second insight of crucial importance is that no planning worth the name is possible in a society in which the means of production remain under the control of private interests which administer them with a view to their owners’ maximum profits (or security or other private advantage). For it is of the very essence of comprehensive planning for economic development - what renders it, indeed, indispensable - that the pattern of allocation and utilization of resources which it must impose if it is to accomplish its purpose, is necessarily different from-the pattern prevailing under the status quo…
(xxviii-xxix, Foreword to 1962 printing) The Political Economy of Growth, Paul A. Baran [emphasis added]

It is surely of some interest that the late Professor Baran-- reassessing his important, insightful, and extremely influential 1957 book, The Political Economy of Growth-- grounds his contribution to the liberation of the post-colonial world in two “insights”: 1. The necessity of “comprehensive” economic planning over the irrational decision-making of the market, and 2. The impossibility of having effective planning with the major productive forces in the hands of private entities operating for profits. 

Put simply, Baran is arguing that the most promising humane and rational escape from the legacy of colonialism is for the developing countries to choose the socialist path going forward and adopt planning as a necessary, rational condition for achieving that goal.

It is of equal interest that many who consider Baran to be one of the fathers of dependency theory-- the theory that development is most significantly hindered by the state-to-state structural barriers imposed by the “core” on the “periphery” or the “North” on the “South” -- have abandoned Baran’s key “insights” for an approach that argues for open, unhindered “fair” exchange and the rationality of markets. 

For many of today’s Western left, the locus of international inequalities is found in the economic relations between states. Exploitation-- in the form of taking advantage of uneven development or resource differences-- undoubtedly occurs in the relations between states, systematically in the colonial era, more indirectly today. That is just to say that competition between capitalist states within a global imperialist system will produce and reproduce various inequalities. It is popular to capture this as conflict between an advantaged North and a disadvantaged South-- while the geographical reference is most inexact, it is widely understood. From Wallerstein, Arrighi, and Gunder Frank, through Amin, and an important consensus today, the central feature of imperialism is thought to be the vast differences in wealth between the rich and poor countries. Moreover, they share the belief that existing structures maintain those differences, structures established and protected by the richest countries.

Of course, they are right to object to these inequalities and the practices and institutions that preserve them. And Paul Baran was acutely aware of these structures, but also attendant to the specific historical conditions influencing the individual countries-- their differences and similarities. He understands the trajectory of the post-colonial states:

Thus, the peoples who came into the orbit of Western capitalist expansion found themselves in the twilight of feudalism and capitalism enduring the worst features of both worlds, and the entire impact of imperialist subjugation to boot. To oppression by their feudal lords, ruthless but tempered by tradition, was added domination by foreign and domestic capitalists, callous and limited only by what the traffic would bear. The obscurantism and arbitrary violence inherited from their feudal past was combined with the rationality and sharply calculating rapacity of their capitalist present. Their exploitation was multiplied, yet its fruits were not to increase their productive wealth; these went abroad or served to support a parasitic bourgeoisie at home. They lived in abysmal misery, yet they had no prospect of a better tomorrow. They existed under capitalism, yet there was no accumulation of capital. They lost their time-honored means of livelihood, their arts and crafts, yet there was no modern industry to provide new ones in their place. They were thrust into extensive contact with the advanced science of the West, yet remained in a state of the darkest backwardness (p. 144). 

At the same time, Baran is fully aware of the predatory nature of foreign capital, denying its “usefulness” and affirming its sole domestic benefit to the merchant class.

Perhaps his clearest statement of the logic of imperialism appears on pages 196-197: 

To be sure, neither imperialism itself nor its modus operandi and ideological trimmings are today what they were fifty or a hundred years ago. Just as outright looting of the outside world has yielded to organized trade with the underdeveloped countries, in which plunder has been rationalized and routinized by a mechanism of impeccably ‘correct’ contractual relations, so has the rationality of smoothly functioning commerce grown into the modern, still more advanced, still more rational system of imperialist exploitation. Like all other historically changing phenomena, the contemporary form of imperialism contains and preserves all its earlier modalities, but raises them to a new level. Its central feature is that it is now directed not solely towards the rapid extraction of large sporadic gains from the objects of its domination, it is no longer content with merely assuring a more or less steady flow of these gains over a somewhat extended period. Propelled by well-organized, rationally conducted monopolistic enterprise, it seeks today to rationalize the flow of these receipts so as to be able to count on it in perpetuity. And this points to the main task of imperialism in our time: to prevent, or, if that is impossible, to slow down and to control the economic development of underdeveloped countries.

Notice that Baran acknowledges, along with today’s fashionable dependency theory, that imperialism’s “main task” is to impose underdevelopment. But imperialism’s agent is identified as the “monopolistic enterprise” and not specifically an antagonistic state or its government. Of course, the state hosting monopoly corporations does all it can to promote and protect their interests, but it should not be confused with either the exploiter or the beneficiary of exploitation: it is “the well-organized, rationally conducted monopolistic enterprise” that bleeds the workers of the developing countries. With monopoly capitalism dominating the state, the state plays a critical, essential role as an enabler for the most powerful monopolies in the global economy.  

For Baran, the key to liberating the former colonies from the stranglehold of rapacious monopolies is not a reordering of international relations, not a campaign for a level international playing field, not alternative market institutions, nor a coalition of dissenters from the status quo, but a radical change in the social and economic structure of the oppressed country.

In this regard, Baran differs from many contemporary dependency theorists who pose multipolarity as an answer to the North-South inequalities and welcome the BRICS development as constituting an anti-imperialist stage. They believe that breaking the stranglehold of the dominant great power-- the US-- will somehow eliminate the logic of contemporary imperialism, that it will disable the “mechanism of impeccably ‘correct’ contractual relations” at the heart of “core” / “periphery” relations. 

But this is not Baran’s thinking. He opts instead for an active engagement of the workers, peasants, and intellectuals on the periphery. His is a class approach. For Baran, working people are not dried leaves, blown this way and that by the powerful winds of great powers. Rather, they are the agents of their own liberation.

Baran draws out the potential of the post-colonial masses through his innovative concept of “surplus.”1 Baran asks revolutionaries in the emerging countries to realize the potential surplus that they may access for development provided that they engage in a “reorganization of the production and distribution of social output” and accept “far reaching changes to the structure of society.” (p. 24). Baran emphasizes four available sources for the surplus:

One is society’s excess consumption (predominantly on the part of the upper income groups…), the second is the output lost to society through the existence of unproductive workers, the third is the output lost because of the irrational and wasteful organization of the existing productive apparatus, and the fourth is the output foregone owing to the existence of unemployment caused primarily by the anarchy of capitalist production and the deficiency of effective demand. (p. 24)

By recovering this surplus, Baran contends that the post-colonial world can begin “the steep ascent” -- the escape from the legacy of colonialism and the stranglehold of capitalism. At the same time, Baran concedes that a resource-poor country, an economy violently distorted by a close neighbor-- a country like Cuba-- will need assistance from the socialist community, an assistance that has been less forthcoming since the demise of the Soviet Union.

The Multipolaristas and the BRICS advocates do not share Baran’s confidence in working people. They cannot conceive a revolutionary answer to the problem of development. They relegate socialism to the far, far-off future, and argue for a more humane capitalism. Their vision ends with establishing a new regime of “structural adjustments” that will blunt the economic power of the US to make way for a plurality of powers competing for global markets, but in a “friendly” way. This is the social-democratic vision taken to the global level. But this is not Baran’s vision.

Like their national counterparts, these global social democrats envision a world in which reforming capitalist social relations-- taming the worst monopoly scoundrels-- will result in the proverbial arc bending toward justice. BRICS, they believe, will give us a level playing field for the monopoly corporations to roam more fairly.

*****

Is Baran’s 1957 (1962) recipe for development relevant to today’s world? Could the so-called global South escape the clutches of the imperialist system by applying the “insights” offered by The Political Economy of Growth?

A recent Oxfam report on inequality in Africa suggests that there is plenty of potential surplus available for building a developmental program based on a class-based approach of appropriation and surplus recovery:

● Africa’s four most affluent billionaires have $57.4 billion in wealth, which is greater than ~50% of the continent’s 1.5 billion people.

● While Africa had no billionaires in 2000, today, there are 23 with a combined wealth of $112.6 billion. The wealth of these 23 ultra-rich Africans has grown by 56% in the last 5 years.

● The richest 5% on the continent have accumulated almost $4 trillion in wealth, more than twice the wealth of the rest of the people in Africa (by comparison, the richest 10% of US households hold two-thirds of US wealth).

● Almost half of the world’s most unequal countries are in Africa.

● The bottom 50% of Africans own less than 1% of the wealth of the continent (by comparison, the bottom 50% of US households own 3% of US wealth).

Presumably, the report does not include the billionaires like Elon Musk, Patrick Soon-Shiong, Rodney Sacks, and many others who relocated and invested outside of Africa. Eight of the top foreign-born US billionaires are from Africa.

Clearly, class, and not state-to-state relations, is at the center of Africa’s human development problem. The “potential surplus” accumulated in the hands of so few would well serve a peoples’ development program that could reverse the concentration of wealth now starving the continent’s poor. Appropriated wealth could well serve an industrial drive and the rationalization of agriculture. More than enough wealth is available in Africa to implement Paul Baran’s twin insights that open this article. 

The BRICS movement-- a coalition of partners aligning to create a different international exchange network that would be less one-sided, less privileging wealthy nations-- is not itself a bad thing. The proverbial level playing field-- the fair and free marketplace-- is a proper goal for capitalist participants competing internationally. But it is not a Left project. It moves the goal no closer in the struggle for justice for working people. It is not class-partisan, and thus ultimately will likely benefit those who gain from the proper functioning of capitalist economic relations in the various countries disadvantaged by existing relations. And we know from the Oxfam report who they are.

One can see the limitations of multipolarity from the recent Rio de Janeiro meeting of BRICS leaders. There is much talk of a “more equitable global order,” of state-to-state “cooperation,” of broader “participation,” even a pledge to fight disease and extreme poverty. The foreign ministers and heads of state dutifully denounce war and aggression. The current President, Luiz InĂ¡cio Lula da Silva “called BRICS a successor of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).” What he didn’t say was that NAM broke up when Cuba transcended toothless resolutions and declarations and actually defended Angola against apartheid South African aggression in a bloody war that brought the criminal regime to its knees. The BRICS response to the attack on Iran brings “toothlessness” back to mind.

Baran’s revolutionary path is not an easy one. Others have tried and failed. From Nkrumah and Lumumba to Thomas Sankara, revolutionaries in Africa have taken steps in this direction, only to be thwarted by powerful forces determined to snuff out even a beginning. That alone should tell the EuroAmerican left that it is the path worth following. 

We should not pretend that reforming global market relations—any more than reforming national market relations-- will secure justice for working people. That will come when the workers, peasants, and intellectuals of the global South decide that justice is impossible while “the means of production remain under the control of private interests which administer them with a view to their owners’ maximum profits.”

While useful in this context, the concept of surplus is less successful as developed in Baran and Sweezy's 1966 work, Monopoly Capital.


Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com




Wednesday, July 2, 2025

Mamdani and Beyond

It should not surprise that many US leftists are excited by the victory of Zohran Mamdani in last Wednesday’s New York City primary election. They should be buoyed by a rare victory in a bleak political landscape.

Mamdani defeated an establishment candidate showered with money and endorsed by Democratic Party royalty. His chief opponent, Andrew Cuomo, enjoyed the support and the forecasts of all the major media, locally and nationally. Cuomo fell back on every cheap, spineless trick: redbaiting (Mamdani is a member of Democratic Socialist of America), ethnic and religious baiting (Mamdani is a foreign-born Muslim), and “unfriendliness” to business (Mamdani advocates taxing the rich, freezing rents, and fare-less transit). And still Mamdani won.

Admittedly, Cuomo is ethically challenged and tarnished by his prior resignation from New York’s Governorship. One supposes that Democratic bigwigs could easily have seen an advantage in masculine sliminess after witnessing the king of vulgarity-- Donald Trump-- enjoy great electoral success.  

But for the left, the important fact was that Cuomo represented the strategy and tactics, the program (such as it is), and the machinery of the Democratic Party leadership. The left needed a victory against the Clintons, Obamas, and Carvilles to demonstrate that another way was possible. And more pointedly, the left needed to see that a program embracing a class-war skirmish against developers, financial titans, and a motley assortment of other capitalists can win in the largest city in the US. Nearly every major policy domestically and internationally that the Democratic Party considers toxic was embraced by Mamdani’s campaign. And still Mamdani won.

And why shouldn’t he? 

Democratic Party consultants methodically ignore the views of voters-- views expressing economic hardship, a broken health care system, mounting debt, a housing crisis, etc.-- delivered by opinion polls. Mamdani listened. And he won.

Clearly, the seats of wealth and power were shaken, reacting violently and crudely to Mamdani’s victory. A major Cuomo backer, hedge fund exec, Dan Loeb, captured the moment: “It’s officially hot commie summer.” 

We wish!

Wall Street quickly panicked, according to the Wall Street Journal

Corporate leaders held a flurry of private phone calls to plot how to fight back against Mamdani and discussed backing an outside group with the goal of raising around $20 million to oppose him, according to people familiar with the matter.

The WSJ quotes Anthony Pompliano, a skittish CEO of a bitcoin-focused financial company: “I can’t believe I even need to say this, but socialism doesn’t work… It has failed in every American city it was tried.”

Others, including hedge-fund manager, Ricky Sandler, threaten to take their business outside New York City.

The Washington Post editorial board scolds readers with this ominous headline warning: Zohran Mamdani’s victory is bad for New York and the Democratic Party.

It gets even wackier in the right wing's outer limits. My favorite libertarian site posted a near hysterical call for the application of the infamous 1954 Communist Control Act to remove him from office, even put Mamdani in prison. The never-disappointing, notorious thug, Erik D Prince, calls for Kristi Noem to initiate deportation proceedings.

Yet not so shockingly, many fellow Democrats nearly matched the scorn and contempt heaped on Mamdani by Wealth, Power, and Trumpers. Senate and House minority leaders-- Schumer and Jeffries-- refused to endorse the primary winner. New York Representative Laura Gillen declared that Mamdani is the "absolute wrong choice for New York." Her colleague, Tom Suozzi, had “serious concerns,” as reported by Axios under the banner: Democratic establishment melts down over Mamdani's win in New York. Other Democrats ran away from discussing the victory and, of course, the overworked, overwrought, and abused charge of “antisemitism” was tossed about promiscuously.

Where there is no fear and alarm, there is euphoria. Nearly every writer for The Nation enthused over the primary victory, with the capable Jeet Heer gleefully proclaiming that “Zohran Mamdani Defeated a Corrupt, Weak Democratic Party Establishment”.

Similarly, David Sirota, former advisor and speechwriter for Bernie Sanders, wrote-- with understandable gloating-- on The Lever and in Rolling Stone:

Democratic Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral primary victory in New York City has prompted an elite panic, the likes of which we’ve rarely seen: Billionaires are desperately seeking a general-election candidate to stop him, former Barack Obama aides are publicly melting down, corporate moguls are threatening a capital strike, and CNBC has become a television forum for nervous breakdowns. Meanwhile, Democratic elites who’ve spent a decade punching left are suddenly trying to align themselves with and take credit for Mamdani’s brand (though not necessarily his agenda).


This breakthrough-- he surmises-- could lead to a “Democratic Party reckoning.”

But wait a minute.

We can’t let euphoria blind us to the track record of other Democratic Party insurgencies. We cannot forget how deeply opposed the Democratic Party’s bosses, consultants, and wealthy benefactors are to popular reforms and even modestly visionary candidates. Party intellectuals fully understand-- as hotshot consultant James Carville bluntly reminds us-- that in a two-party system all the oppositional party has to do is wait for the other party to stumble and then take its turn. Why would the Democrats bother to construct a voter-friendly program leaning towards social justice?

A glance at the crude sabotage of two Bernie Sanders Presidential campaigns by the Democratic Party Godfathers should dispel even the most gullible from any delusion that the party will change course.

Should Mamdani actually win the mayoral race-- and we must work hard to see that he does-- there is absolutely no reason to believe that the Party of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama will draw even the most modest conclusion about the way forward. They are not interested in going forward, only in returning to power. Of course, they will-- as they have in the past-- welcome idealistic foot soldiers who want to believe that the Democratic Party is the path to social justice. Generations of well-meaning, change-seeking youth have been ground up by this cynical process of bait-and-switch.

Though the Party’s leadership will not acknowledge it, the Democrat brand is widely discredited. As Jarod Abbott and Les Leopold conclude: “Polling shows Americans are ready to support independent populists running on economic platforms. But what they don’t want is anything associated with the Democratic Party’s brand.” 

Stopping short of calling for a new party, Abbott and Leopold asked poll respondents in key rust-belt states if they would support a worker-oriented association independent of both parties to support independent candidates. Fifty-seven percent of respondents would support or strongly support such an association. 

This squares with recent polls that show strong disapproval of elected Democrats and the Democratic Party. The recent late-May Financial Times/YouGov poll shows that 57 percent of respondents have an unfavorable view of Democrats in Congress. And a similar 57 percent have an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party. Only 11 percent have a very favorable view of the Democratic Party. 

Whether an “association” or a party is necessary, Abbott and Leopold are correct in recognizing that it must have a strong working-class base in order to break away from the corporate ownership of the Democratic Party.

As Charles Derber has perceptively noted on a recent podcast, the worse outcome of the current multi-faceted crisis is to revert to the earlier times that spawned the Trump phenomena. And that is exactly what the Democrats are offering.

With the Republican Party leadership facing a schism over Iran between war hawks and non-interventionists (Greene, Bannon, and Carlson) and with the growing split between cultural warriors and Silicon Valley libertarians (Musk’s threat to launch a third party), the Democrats may well slip back into power by default.  

Surely, we can do better.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com